Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and read recent editions of Edge ...

Playwright Richard Foreman asks about the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". Is it a new self? Are we becoming Pancake People — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Technology analyst Nicholas Carr wrote the most notable of many magazine and newspaper pieces asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid". Has the use of the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing?

Social software guru Clay Shirky notes that people are reading more than ever but the return of reading has not brought about the return of the cultural icons we'd been emptily praising all these years. "What's so great about War and Peace?, he wonders. Having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. Is the enormity of the historical shift away from literary culture now finally becoming clear?

Science historian George Dyson asks "what if the cost of machines that think is people who don't?" He wonders "will books end up back where they started, locked away in monasteries and read by a select few?".

Web 2.0 pioneer Tim O'Reilly, ponders if ideas themselves are the ultimate social software. Do they evolve via the conversations we have with each other, the artifacts we create, and the stories we tell to explain them?

Frank Schirrmacher, Feuilleton Editor and Co-Publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has noticed that we are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. Are we turning into a new species — informavores? — he asks.

W. Daniel Hillis goes a step further by asking if the Internet will, in the long run, arrive at a much richer infrastructure, in which ideas can potentially evolve outside of human minds? In other words, can we change the way the Internet thinks?

What do you think?

This year's Question is "How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?" Not "How is the Internet changing the way WE think?" We spent a lot of time going back on forth on "YOU" vs. "WE" and came to the conclusion to go with "YOU", the reason being that Edge is a conversation. "WE" responses tend to come across like expert papers, public pronouncements, or talks delivered from stage.

We wanted people to think about the "Internet", which includes, but is a much bigger subject than the Web, an application on the Internet, or search, browsing, etc., which are apps on the Web. Back in 1996, computer scientist and visionary Danny Hillis pointed out that when it comes to the Internet, "Many people sense this, but don't want to think about it because the change is too profound. Today, on the Internet the main event is the Web. A lot of people think that the Web is the Internet, and they're missing something. The Internet is a brand-new fertile ground where things can grow, and the Web is the first thing that grew there. But the stuff growing there is in a very primitive form. The Web is the old media incorporated into the new medium. It both adds something to the Internet and takes something away."

This year, I enlisted the aid of Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London, as well as the artist April Gornik, one of the early members of "The Reality Club" (the precursor to the online Edge) to help broaden the Edge conversation — or rather to bring it back to where it was in the late 80s/early 90s, when April gave a talk at a "Reality Club" meeting, and discussed the influence of chaos theory on her work, and when Benoit Mandelbrot showed up to discuss fractal theory and every artist in NYC wanted to be there. What then happened was very interesting. The Reality Club went online as Edge in 1996 and the scientists were all on email, the artists not. Thus, did Edge surprisingly become a science site when my own background (beginning in 1965 when Jonas Mekas hired me to manage the Film-Makers' Cinematheque) was in the visual and performance arts.

As each new year approaches, John Brockman, founder of Edge, an online publication, consults with three of the original members of Edge—Stewart Brand, founder and editor of Whole Earth Catalog; Kevin Kelly, who helped to launch Wired in 1993 and wrote "What Technology Wants," a book to bepublished in October (Viking Penguin); and George Dyson, a science historian who is the author of several books including "Darwin Among the Machines." Together they create the Edge Annual Question—which Brockman then sends out to the Edge list to invite responses. He receives these commentaries by e-mail, which are then edited. Edge is a read-only site. There is no direct posting nor is Edge open for comments.

Brockman has been asking an Edge Annual Question for the past 13 years. In this essay, he explains what makes a question a good one to ask and shares some responses to this year's question: "How is the Internet changing the way you think?"

It's not easy coming up with a question. As the artist James Lee Byars used to say: "I can answer the question, but am I bright enough to ask it?" Edge is a conversation. We are looking for questions that inspire answers we can't possibly predict. Surprise me with an answer I never could have guessed. My goal is to provoke people into thinking thoughts that they normally might not have.

The art of a good question is to find a balance between abstraction and the personal, to ask a question that has many answers, or at least one for which you don't know the answer. It's a question distant enough to encourage abstractions and not so specific that it's about breakfast. A good question encourages answers that are grounded in experience but bigger than that experience alone.

ON THE COVER INTERNET ERGO SUM
The network has changed our
way of thinking? Meet artists, intellectuals and
Scientists around the world. From Kevin Kelly to Brian Eno, from
Richard Dawkins, to Clay Shirky, to Nicholas Carr

In 1953, when the internet was not even a technological twinkle in the eye, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously divided thinkers into two categories: the hedgehog and the fox: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Hedgehog writers, argued Berlin, see the world through the prism of a single overriding idea, whereas foxes dart hither and thither, gathering inspiration from the widest variety of experiences and sources. Marx, Nietzsche and Plato were hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare and Berlin himself were foxes.

Today, feasting on the anarchic, ubiquitous, limitless and uncontrolled information cornucopia that is the web, we are all foxes. We browse and scavenge thoughts and influences, picking up what we want, discarding the rest, collecting, linking, hunting and gathering our information, social life and entertainment. The new Apple iPad is merely the latest step in the fusion of the human mind and the internet. This way of thinking is a direct threat to ideology. Indeed, perhaps the ultimate expression of hedgehog-thinking is totalitarian and fundamentalist, which explains why the regimes in China and Iran are so terrified of the internet. The hedgehogs rightly fear the foxes.

Edge (www.edge.org), a website dedicated to ideas and technology, recently asked scores of philosophers, scientists and scholars a simple but fundamental question: "How is the internet changing the way you think?” The responses were astonishingly varied, yet most agreed that the web had profoundly affected the way we gather our thoughts, if not the way we deploy that information.

January 19, 2010The Age of External KnowledgeToday’s idea: Filtering, not remembering, is the most important mental skill in the digital age, an essay says.
But this discipline will prove no mean feat, since mental focus must take place amid the unlimited
distractions of the Internet.

Internet | Edge, the high-minded ideas and tech site, has posed its annual question for 2010 — "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" — and gotten some interesting responses from a slew of smart people. They range from the technology analyst Nicholas Carr, who wonders if the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing; to Clay Shirky, social software guru, who sees the Web poised uncertainly between immature "Invisible High School" and more laudable "Invisible College." David Dalrymple, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks human memory will no longer be the key repository of knowledge, and focus will supersede erudition. Quote:

Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends’ doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.

Edge is an organization of deep, visionary thinkers on science and culture. Each year the group poses a question, this year collecting 168 essay responses to the question, "How is the Internet changing the way you think?"

In answer, academics, scientists and philosophers responded with musings on the Internet enabling telecommunication, or functioning as a sort of prosthesis, or robbing us of our old, linear" mode of thinking. Actor Alan Alda described the Web as "speed plus mobs." Responses alternate between the quirky and the profound ("In this future, knowledge will be fully outside the individual, focus will be fully inside, and everybody's selves will truly be spread everywhere.")

Since it takes a while to read the entire collection--and the Atlantic Wire should know, as we tried--here are some of the more piquant answers. Visit the Edge website for the full experience. For a smart, funny answer in video form, see here.

We Haven't Changed, declares Harvard physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis. Our brains "likely evolved ... in response to the demands of social (rather than environmental) complexity," and would likely only continue to evolve as our social framework changes. Our social framework has not changed: from our family units to our military units, he points out, our social structures remain fairly similar to what they were over 1000 years ago. "The Internet itself is not changing the fundamental reality of my thinking any more than it is changing our fundamental proclivity to violence or our innate capacity for love."

Bordering on Mental Illness Barry C. Smith of the University of London writes of the new importance of "well-packaged information." He says he is personally "exhilarated by the dizzying effort to make connections and integrate information. Learning is faster. Though the tendency to forge connecting themes can feel dangerously close to the search for patterns that overtakes the mentally ill."

BRAIN TRUSTForward thinking and other ideas for the future described by today's greatest scientists

"Between Possible and Imaginary" is the theme of the Science Festival which opens in Rome next week. The American popularizer John Brockman collected the forecasts of the greatest living minds about ideas that will change everything during their lifetime. From DNA to education, the book illustrates surprising and provocative discoveries from the world that await us.

On that Friday in January 2010 published by the American literary agent John Brockman, the question of 2010: How the Internet and networked computers to change the way we think? At the core of the debate lies the question asked by science historian George Dyson: "Is the price of machines that think, people who will not do?"

Brockman, who counts some of the most important scientists of our time as his authors, this vision orbits on Edge.org with one hundred twenty-one answers. We print the most interesting in the features section. Unlike Germany, where the debate about the information age is still focused on palaver about media, Edge debates the target in depth.

Who is planning what, where, by what means?

If one takes the digital revolution seriously , one must ask to what degree the communication of the industrialized twenty-first century will change our thinking. The computer pioneer Daniel Hillis describes how even such a simple procedure such as the programming of the time on networked computers is now barely understood by many programmers. And he concludes, with regard to climate change and financial crisis: "Our machines are embodiments of our reason, and we entrust them with a large number of our decisions. In this process we have created a world that is beyond our understanding. Experts no longer talk about data, but about what computers predict with the data."

Neurobiological effects of constant multitasking lead, as Nicholas Carr writes about outsourcing, for ever-increasing dependence on computers. What if not only decisions about loans and budgets were subject to the use of computers, but also those regarding resumes? After the recent incidents in America, profiling is an even more important means of web-based "pre-crime" analysis: Who is planning what, where, by what means? But profiling what works with terrorists can also be applied to in enterprises and workplaces as Cataphora.com has shown.

Been overtaken by reality

Some of those authors presented by Brockman do not find that the Net has changed their thinking. Others see it differently. Nobody, not even the skeptics, long to return to a time before the Internet. But many make it clear that what we experience as a user is in fact only a "surfing", a movement on the surface. The German Internet debate is stuck in the nineties. Brockman's question this year sets the chord for questions that take us beyond this set of attitudes.

Do you think the Internet has altered you mind at the neuronal, cognitive, processing, emotional levels? Yes, no, maybe, reply philosophers, scientists, writers, journalists to the Edge annual question 2010, in dozens of texts that are published online today

In the summer of 2008, American writer Nicholas Carr published in the Atlantic Monthly an article under the title Is Google making us stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains, in which highly criticized the Internet’s effects on our intellectual capabilities. The article had a high impact, both in the media and the blogosphere.

Edge.org – the intellectual online salon – has now expanded and deepened the debate through its traditional annual challenge to dozens of the world’s leading thinkers of science, technology, thought, arts, journalism. The 2010 question is: “How is the Internet changing the way you think?"

They reply that the Internet has made them (us) smarter, shallower, faster, less attentive, more accelerated, less creative, more tactile, less visual, more altruistic, less arrogant. That it has dramatically expanded our memory but at the same time made us the hostages of the present tense. The global web is compared to an ecosystem, a collective brain, a universal memory, a global conscience, a total map of geography and history.

One thing is certain: be they fans or critics, they all use it and they all admit that the Internet leaves no one untouched. No one can remain impervious to things such a Wikipedia or Google, no one can resist the attraction of instant, global, communication and knowledge.

More than 120 scientists, physicians, engineers, authors, artists, journalists met the challenge. Here, we present the gist some of their answers, including Nicholas Carr’s, who is also part of this online think tank founded by New-York literary agent John Brockman. If you have more time and think your attention span is up to it, we recommend you enjoy the whole scope of their length and diversity by visiting edge.org.

The online magazine Edge asked scientists, writers and artists, such as the Internet has changed their thinking. The answers are remarkable. ...

Two billion people worldwide use the Internet. The debates about the new technology, however, are not the same everywhere. In Germany, for example, the discourse is limited on the subject of the net, as it is especially focused on media and copyright debates.

The publication of the book "Payback", co-editor Frank Schirrmacher, co-editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung presents the German debate, giving the topic the the depth it deserves.

Prior to the publication Schirrmacher 's book, the American literary agent John Brockman, interviewed him for Edge.org, the online science and culture magazine.

Schirrmacher, in his book, also asked the question — Has the Internet changed thinking? Brockman has now taken up this issue, and formulated it as his fundamental question, which he asks at the end of each year of the scientists and authors who discuss and publish on Edge.

The answers have now been published on Edge.org. The authors are 131 influential scientists, authors and artists.

The ways the Internet supposedly affects thought are as apocalyptic as they are speculative, since all the above are supported by anecdote, not empirical data. So it is refreshing to hear how 109 philosophers, neurobiologists, and other scholars answered, "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" That is the "annual question" at the online salon edge.org, where every year science impresario, author, and literary agent John Brockman poses a puzzler for his flock of scientists and other thinkers. ...

I flunked a physics test so badly as a college freshman that the only reason I scored any points was I spelled my name right.

Such ignorance, along with studied avoidance of physics and math since college, didn’t lessen my enjoyment of This Will Change Everything, a provocative, demanding clutch of essays covering everything from gene splicing to global warming to intelligence, both artificial and human, to immortality.

Edited by John Brockman, a literary agent who founded the Edge Foundation, this is the kind of book into which one can dip at will. Approaching it in a linear fashion might be frustrating because it is so wide-ranging. ...

...Overall, this will appeal primarily to scientists and academicians. But the way Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science with ones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzz any brain.

Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog, a kind of hippie precursor of hypertext and intermedia (the last term is a Brockman coinage), calls Brockman "one of the great intellectual enzymes of our time” at www.edge.org, Brockman’s Web site. Brockman clearly is an agent provocateur of ideas. Getting the best of them to politicians who can use them to execute positive change is the next step.

In the preface to the recent reissue of The betrayal of the intellectuals, 1927 Julien Benda (Galaxia Gutenberg), Fernando Savater stated that "perhaps the greatest paradox of the paradoxes of the twentieth century is this: there has never been a time in human history in which more developed the ability to produce tools and knowledge the inner structure of reality in all fields. So, never was more scientific and technical brilliance. But neither had ever so many ideological movements based (or better, desfondados) as irrational, dogmatic or unverifiable, above all, never was such a wealth of supporters of rapture or intuitive certainty blood among the elite of servers for high spiritual functions. "In the words of Benda," men whose function is to defend and selfless eternal values such as justice and reason, and I call intellectuals have betrayed that role for practical interests, which often result in the conversion of a mere intellectual ideologue who aspires to a space power...

...Following the wake of Snow and probably trying to repair the betrayal of Benda-speaking, John Brockman in 1988 founded the Edge Foundation (www.edge.org), an organization that seeks to reintegrate, under the idea of a "Third Culture "scientific and humanistic discourse and contribute to that science has a key role in the discussion of public affairs. ...

Talk about change was more plentiful in 2008 than loose coins in an old couch.
Despite all the lip-flapping, that place where gods and devils dwell -- the details -- was largely unexplored.

The Obama administration will soon offer its ideas for reviving the economy and reshaping America's foreign policy. But politicians aren't the only ones who can remake the world.

Scientists have at least as much power to transform our lives and history. What "game-changing scientific ideas and developments" do they expect to occur during the next few decades?

That's the question John Brockman, editor of the Web site edge.org, posed to about 160 cutting-edge minds in his 11th annual Edge Question. As in years past, they responded with bold, often thrilling, sometimes chilling, answers.

Dawkins speculates about how a human-chimp hybrid or the discovery of a living Homo erectus would change the way we see the world. — James Randerson

In a late response to Edge.org's annual New Year challenge to the world's leading thinkers, Prof Richard Dawkins has submitted his entry. Edge.org asked scientists, philosophers, artists and journalists "What will change everything?"

Dawkins — author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion — muses on the effect of breaking down the barrier between humans and animals, perhaps by the creation of a chimera in a lab or a "successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee".

The artist and composer responds to this year's Edge.org question: What will change everything?

[PHOTO: BRIAN ENO/EAMONN MCCABE]

What would change everything is not even a thought. It's more of a feeling.

Human development thus far has been fueled and guided by the feeling that things could be, and are probably going to be, better. The world was rich compared to its human population; there were new lands to conquer, new thoughts to nurture, and new resources to fuel it all. The great migrations of human history grew from the feeling that there was a better place, and the institutions of civilisation grew out of the feeling that checks on pure individual selfishness would produce a better world for everyone involved in the long term.

The predictions range from miracle cures and world peace to economic ruin and nuclear war. If there is a theme to the World Questions 2009, an online survey of some of the world's top thinkers, it would seem to be inconsistency.

Published yesterday on intellectual Website edge.org, the survey asked 150 leading scientists, artists and commentators for their views on the single biggest change likely to affect the world during their lifetimes.

The wide range of answers they gave provides a snapshot of the hopes — and fears — that may come to define our times.

GJ: We were talking abut great thiigs on the Internet in science...so you read Edge.org' question of the year?

JH: Yes, the annual question from John Brockman, the science book impressario. He's got this great site edge.org 2hich we've talked about before and every year he asks this question and he's asks this ever-growing stable of people, primarily scientists but a of of quasi-scientist pundits to respond this question. The question this year is "What will change everything".

Scientists and other experts rattle off options for averting climate catastropheMeanwhile, the mysterious Edge Foundation released its annual question for 2009, asking smart folks of all disciplines to name what new idea or technology will "change everything." Responses range all over, but there are a few climate-related responses, including British novelist Ian McEwan's prediction that solar technology will really take off and Stanford climatologist Stephen H. Schneider's guess that rapid melting of Greenland's ice sheets will wake up the world to the need to take concerted action on curbing C02 emissions.

If you're familiar with The Edge's annual survey of scientists, science writers and scientific types, you know how fascinating the answers are. Follow the link above to get started reading them -- and then share in the comboxes your own answer to the question, and how you reached that conclusioN

[Caption: Ian McEwan muses that we will look back and 'wonder why we ever thought we had a problem when we are bathed in such beneficent radiant energy'. Photograph: Getty]

Flying cars, personal jetpacks, holidays on the moon, the paperless office — the predictions of futurologists are, it seems, doomed to fail. The only thing predictable about the future is its unpredictability.

But that has not stopped edge.org — the online intellectual salon — asking which ideas and inventions will provide humanity's next leap forward. In its traditional New Year challenge to the planet's best thinkers it asks, "What will change everything — What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

Most scientists like to dream about what will change the world — even if they understand that their own work is never likely to have quite the impact of a Copernicus or a Darwin.

The fascinating breadth of their visions of the future is revealed today by the discussion Website edge.com, which has asked some of the world's finest minds the question: "What will change everything?"

As each year winds to a close, John Brockman, literary agent representing some of the finest minds in science and technology and the founder of Edge Foundation, poses a provocative question to an international community of physicists, psychologists, futurists, thought leaders, and dreamers. Brockman is a master convener, both online and in real life. This year's annual Edge question, What will change everything?, generated responses from Freeman Dyson, Danny Hillis, Martin Seligman, Craig Venter, and Juan Enriquez, to name a few. Here are a few highlights.

Every December the online intellectual salon called Edge, presided over by literary agent John Brockman, asks a select (virtual) assembly of scientists to ponder a question, such as what they are optimistic about (2007), what "dangerous" ideas they have (2006) and what they believe is true but cannot prove (2005). As the bell tolls on 2008 and rings in 2009, Edge is unveiling this year's: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

As usual, the offerings vary as much in quality as a cheap spumante does from Dom Perignon. Predictably, contributors foresee space colonization and the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. More intriguing, there are predictions that a new human species will evolve from Homo sapiens, and that we will discover how to identify the brain pattern that indicates a person is about to commit a violent act (and will also discover how to suppress that pattern).

The world's greatest thinkers have revealed the ideas and technologies they think will change the world forever. Now it's our turn ...

James Randerson, science correspondent

Futurology is notoriously hit-and-miss. According to 2001: A Space Odyssey, we should already be using suspended animation to send humans to Jupiter

"Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves." So says the intro to edge.org's annual New Year challenge to the world's greatest thinkers.This year it is asking "What will change everything — What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" And as ever, the great and the good have responded to the call. ...

The splendidly enlightened Edge Website (www.edge.org) has rounded off each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting contributors to answer one question. I songly recommend a visit.

A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture

As fascinating and weighty as one would imagine

They are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change their minds

Even the world's best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists respond to a new year challenge

Provocative ideas put forward today by leading figures

The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now.

As in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity.

A jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues. This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake — bracing, possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up

Answers ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions

For an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!.

But when the scientific thinkers look beyond their own specializations
to the big picture, they continue to find cause for cheer — foreseeing
an end to war, for example, or the simultaneous solution
of our global warming and energy problems. The most general
grounds for optimism offered by these thinkers, though,
is that big-picture pessimism so often proves to be unfounded.

Global
warming, the war on terror and rampant consumerism getting
you down? Well, lighten up: here, 17 of the world's smartest
scientists and academics share their reasons to be cheerful

Brockman's respondents were forward-looking, describing
cutting-edge research that will help combat global warming
and other looming problems.

One way or another the answers should give you a warm
glow — either because you agree, or because they
make you angry.

Edge's future-themed article is making some news....
From the lips of contributors to the online magazine
Edge to God's ears (one wonders if She or It may be listening):
dozens of scientists and other thinkers have looked ahead
to the future.

a Web site that aims to bridge the gap between scientists
and other thinkers

[E]ven in the face of such threats as global warming and
religious fundamentalism, scientists remain positive about
the future.

People's fascination for religion and superstition will
disappear within a few decades as television and the Internet
make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer
to discovering a final theory of everything, leading thinkers
argue today.

What are you optimistic about? Why? Tons of brilliant thinkers
respond.

(Sydney)
Into the minds of the believers. With
the aim of gathering ideas from the
world's leading thinkers on intellectual,
philosophical, artistic and literary
issues, US writer John Brockman established
The Edge Foundation in 1988.

Royal
Society president Martin Rees said the
most dangerous idea was public concern
that science and technology were running
out of control.

Audacious
Knowledge. What is a dangerous idea?
One not assumed to be false, but possibly
true?What do you believe is true even
though you cannot prove it?"

Seductive
power of a hazardous idea. The responses
to Brockman's question do not directly
engage with each other, but they do worry
away at a core set of themes.

Academics
see gene cloning perils, untamed global
warming and personality-changing drugs
as presenting the gravest dangers for
the future of civiliztion

Risky
ideas; What do scientists currently regard
as the most dangerous thoughts?

Be
Afraid. Edge.org canvassed scientists for
their "most dangerous idea." David
Buss, a psychologist at the University
of Texas, chose "The Evolution of
Evil."

The
most dangerous idea. Brockman's challenge
is noteworthy because his buddies include
many of the world's greatest scientists:
Freeman Dyson, David Gelertner, J. Craig
Venter, Jared Diamond, Brian Greene.

Dangerous
Ideas About Modern Life. Free will does
not exist. We are not always created
equal. Science will never be able to
address our deepest concerns.

Genome
sequencing pioneer Craig Venter suggests
greater understanding of how genes influence
characteristics such as personality,
intelligence and athletic capability
could lead to conflict in society.

The
wilder shores of creativity. He asked
his roster of thinkers [...] to nominate
an idea, not necessarily their own, they
consider dangerous not because it is
false, but because it might be true.

From cloning to predetermination of sex:
the answers of investigators and philosophers
to a question on the online salon Edge.

Who
controls humans? God? The genes? Or nevertheless
the computer? The on-line forum Edge
asked its yearly question — and
the answers raised more questions.

The
117 respondents include Richard Dawkins,
Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared
Diamond — and that's just the
D's! As you might expect, the submissions
are brilliant and very controversial.

Gene
discoveries highlight dangers facing
society. Mankind's increasing understanding
of the way genes influence behaviour
and the issue's potential to cause ethical
and moral dilemmas is one of the biggest
dangers facing society, according to
leading scientists.

Why
it can be a very smart move to start
life with a Jewish momma: There is one
dangerous idea that still trumps them
all: the notion that, as Steven Pinker
describes it, "groups of people
may differ genetically in their average
talents and temperaments". For "groups
of people", read "races."

The
Earth can cope with global warming, schools
should be banned and we should learn
to love bacteria. These are among the
dangerous ideas revealed by a poll of
leading thinkers.

Science
can be a risky game, as Galileo learned
to his cost. Now John Brockman asks over
a hundred thinkers, "What is your
most dangerous idea?"

"Our
brains are constantly subjected to the
demands of multi-tasking and a seemingly
endless cacophony of information from
diverse sources. "

Very
complex systems — whether organisms,
brains, the biosphere, or the universe
itself — were not constructed by
design; all have evolved. There is a
new set of metaphors to describe ourselves,
our minds, the universe, and all of the
things we know in it.

Space
Without Time, Time Without Rest: John Brockman's
Question for the Republic of Wisdom — It
can be more thrilling to start the New Year
with a good question than with a good intention.
That's what John Brockman is doing for the
eight time in a row.

What
do you believe to be true, even though you
can't prove it? John Brockman asked over a
hundred scientists and intellectuals... more» ...
Edge

That's
what online magazine The Edge — the
World Question Center asked over 120 scientists,
futurists, and other interesting minds. Their
answers are sometimes short and to the point

To
celebrate the new year, online magazine Edge asked
some leading thinkers a simple question:
What do you believe but cannot prove? Here
is a selection of their responses...

Scientists
dream too — imagine that

"Fantastically
stimulating ...Once
you start, you can't stop thinking about that
question. It's like the crack cocaine of the
thinking world." — BBC Radio 4

Scientists,
increasingly, have become our public intellectuals,
to whom we look for explanations and solutions.
These may be partial and imperfect, but they
are more satisfactory than the alternatives.

Bangladesh — The
cynic and the optimist, the agnostic and
the believer, the rationalist and the obscurantist,
the scientist and the speculative philosopher,
the realist and the idealist-all converge
on a critical point in their thought process
where reasoning loses its power.

"So
now, into the breach comes John Brockman, the literary
agent and gadfly, whose online scientific salon,
Edge.org, has become one of the most interesting
stopping places on the Web. He begins every year
by posing a question to his distinguished roster
of authors and invited guests. Last year he asked
what sort of counsel each would offer George W.
Bush as the nation's top science adviser. This
time the question is "What's your law?"

"John
Brockman, a New York literary agent, writer and
impresario of the online salon Edge, figures it
is time for more scientists to get in on the whole
naming thing...As a New Year's exercise, he asked
scores of leading thinkers in the natural and social
sciences for "some bit of wisdom, some rule
of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand
or small, that you've noticed in the universe that
might as well be named after you."

"John
Brockman has posted an intriguing question on his
Edge Website. Brockman advises his would-be legislators
to stick to the scientific disciplines."

"Everything
answers to the rule of law. Nature. Science. Society.
All of it obeys a set of codes...It's the thinker's
challenge to put words to these unwritten rules.
Do so, and he or she may go down in history. Like
a Newton or, more recently, a Gordon Moore, who
in 1905 coined the most cited theory of the technological
age, an observation on how computers grow exponentially
cheaper and more powerful... Recently, John Brockman
went looking for more laws."

"In
2002, he [Brockman] asked respondents to imagine
that they had been nominated as White House science
adviser and that President Bush had sought their
answer to 'What are the pressing scientific issues
for the nation and the world, and what is your
advice on how I can begin to deal with them?'Here
are excerpts of some of the responses. "

"Edge's
combination of political
engagement and blue-sky thinking
makes stimulating reading
for anyone seeking a glimpse
into the next decade."

"Dear
W: Scientists Offer
President Advice on Policy"

"There
are
84
responses,
ranging
in
topic
from
advanced
nanotechnology
to
the
psychology
of
foreign
cultures,
and
lots
of
ideas
regarding
science,
technology,
politics,
and
education."

"Brockman's
thinkers of the 'Third Culture,'
whether they, like Dawkins,
study evolutionary biology
at Oxford or, like Alan Alda,
portray scientists on Broadway,
know no taboos. Everything
is permitted, and nothing
is excluded from this intellectual
game."

"The
responses are generally
written in an engaging,
casual style (perhaps encouraged
by the medium of e-mail),
and are often fascinating
and thought — provoking....
These are all wonderful,
intelligent questions..."

"Responses
to this year's question are deliciously creative...
the variety astonishes. Edge continues
to launch intellectual skyrockets of stunning
brilliance. Nobody in the world is doing what Edge is
doing."

"Once
a year, John Brockman of New York, a writer
and literary agent who represents many scientists,
poses a question in his online journal, The
Edge, and invites the thousand or so people
on his mailing list to answer it."

"Don't
assume for a second that Ted Koppel, Charlie
Rose and the editorial high command at the New
York Times have a handle on all the pressing
issues of the day.... a lengthy list of profound,
esoteric and outright entertaining responses.

The
Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years
Edited
by John
Brockman

"A terrific, thought provoking site."

"The
Power of Big Ideas"

"The
Nominees for Best Invention Of the Last Two Millennia
Are . . ."

"...Thoughtful and often surprising answers
....a fascinating survey of intellectual and
creative wonders of the world ..... Reading
them reminds me of how wondrous our world is." — Bill Gates, New York Times Syndicated
Column

"A
site that has raised electronic discourse on the
Web to a whole new level.... Genuine learning seems
to be going on here."

"To
mark the first anniversary of [Edge],
Brockman posed a question: 'Simply reading the
six million volumes in the Widener Library does
not necessarily lead to a complex and subtle
mind," he wrote, referring to the Harvard
library. "How to avoid the anesthesiology
of wisdom?' "

"Home
to often lively, sometimes obscure and almost
always ambitious discussions."

"Open-minded,
free-ranging, intellectually playful
...an unadorned pleasure in curiosity,
a collective expression of wonder
at the living and inanimate world
... an ongoing and thrilling colloquium." — Ian
McEwan, Author of Saturday

"Astounding
reading."

"An
unprecedented roster of brilliant minds,
the sum of which is nothing short of
visionary

"Fantastically
stimulating...It's like the crack cocaine
of the thinking world.... Once you
start, you can't stop thinking about
that question."

I flunked a physics test so badly as a college freshman that the only reason I scored any points was I spelled my name right.

Such ignorance, along with studied avoidance of physics and math since college, didn’t lessen my enjoyment of This Will Change Everything, a provocative, demanding clutch of essays covering everything from gene splicing to global warming to intelligence, both artificial and human, to immortality.

Edited by John Brockman, a literary agent who founded the Edge Foundation, this is the kind of book into which one can dip at will. Approaching it in a linear fashion might be frustrating because it is so wide-ranging. ...

... Most of the writing in this dense book is serious, even academic, however, there are pieces that tickled my funny bone or my anger bone. Artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s suggestion of a “worldwide collective decision to genetically miniaturize future generations” so humanity doesn’t run out of resources is wonderfully fanciful; Alan Alda’s thoughts on our inability to live together eloquently despairing.

Overall, this will appeal primarily to scientists and academicians. But the way Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science with ones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzz any brain.

Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog, a kind of hippie precursor of hypertext and intermedia (the last term is a Brockman coinage), calls Brockman “one of the great intellectual enzymes of our time” at www.edge.org, Brockman’s Web site. Brockman clearly is an agent provocateur of ideas. Getting the best of them to politicians who can use them to execute positive change is the next step.

"Full of ideas wild (neurocosmetics, “resizing ourselves,” “intuit[ing] in six dimensions”) and more close-to-home (“Basketball and Science Camps,” solar technology”), this volume offers dozens of ingenious ways to think about progress"

NONFICTION (STARRED REVIEW)

This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future
Edited byJohn Brockman. Harper Perennial, $14.99 paper (416p) ISBN 9780061899676
Part of a series stemming from his online science journal Edge (www.edge.org), including What Have You Changed Your Mind About? and What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, author and editor Brockman presents 136 answers to the question, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” Milan architect Stefano Boeri responds with a single sentence: “Discovering that someone from the future has already come to visit us.” Most others take the question more seriously; J. Craig Venter believes his laboratory will use “digitized genetic information” to direct organisms in creating biofuels and recycling carbon dioxide. Like biofuels, several topics are recurrent: both Robert Shapiro and Douglas Rushikoff consider discovering a “Separate Origin for Life,” a terrestrial unicellular organism that doesn’t belong to our tree of life; Leo M. Chalupa and Alison Gopnik both consider the possibility resetting the adult brain’s plasticity—its capacity for learning—to childhood levels. Futurologist Juan Enriquez believes that reengineering body parts and the brain will lead to “human speciation” unseen for hundreds of thousands of years, while controversial atheist Richard Dawkins suggests that reverse-engineering evolution could create a highly illuminating “continuum between every species and every other.” Full of ideas wild (neurocosmetics, “resizing ourselves,” “intuit[ing] in six dimensions”) and more close-to-home (“Basketball and Science Camps,” solar technology”), this volume offers dozens of ingenious ways to think about progress. (Jan.)

The latest prophetic collection from John Brockman of Edge.org invites scores of the world's most brilliant thinkers, including Richard Dawkins, Lisa Randall, and Brian Eno, to predict what game-changing events will occur in their lifetimes. Their speculations run the existential gamut, as some predict deliberate nuclear disaster or accidental climatic apocalypse and others foresee eternal life, unlimited prosperity, and boundless happiness. Between such extremes of heaven and hell lie more ambiguous visions: An end to forgetting, the creation of intelligent machines, and cosmetic brain surgery, to name a few. Pouring over these pages is like attending a dinner party where every guest is brilliant and captivating and only wants to speak with you—overwhelming, but an experience to savor.

HOLIDAY BOOKS: This Will Change Everything edited by John Brockman; John Brockman's annual question draws a bewildering array of responses from a stellar cast of intellectuals

by Michael Bond

LITERARY agent John Brockman assembles a stellar cast of intellectuals each year to answer a boundary-pushing question. His latest poser — "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" — has drawn a stunning array of responses, from nuclear terrorism to in-vitro meat.

Some ideas are predictable (immortality, intelligent robots, designer children), some world-saving if they happened (oil we can grow) and some we'd be better off without (neuro-cosmetics). Many are self-indulgent technological fantasies. With contributions from Ian McEwan, Steven Pinker, Lee Smolin, Craig Venter, Richard Dawkins and 130 others of their ilk, the book is like an intellectual lucky dip.

Perfect for: anyone who wants to know what the big thinkers will be chewing on in 2010.

Contributors include: RICHARD DAWKINS on cross-species breeding; IAN McEWAN on the remote frontiers of solar energy; FREEMAN DYSON on radiotelepathy; STEVEN PINKER on the perils and potential of direct-to-consumer genomics; SAM HARRIS on mind-reading technology; NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB on the end of precise knowledge; CHRIS ANDERSON on how the Internet will revolutionize education; IRENE PEPPERBERG on unlocking the secrets of the brain; LISA RANDALL on the power of instantaneous information; BRIAN ENO on the battle between hope and fear; J. CRAIG VENTER on rewriting DNA; FRANK WILCZEK on mastering matter through quantum physics.

"a provocative, demanding clutch of essays covering everything from gene splicing to global warming to intelligence, both artificial and human, to immortality... the way Brockman interlaces essays about research on the frontiers of science with ones on artistic vision, education, psychology and economics is sure to buzz any brain." (Chicago Sun-Times)

"11 books you must read —
Curl up with these reads on days when you just don't want to do anything else: 5. John Brockman's This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future" (Forbes India)

Contributors include: STEVEN PINKER on the future of human evolution • RICHARD DAWKINS on the mysteries of courtship • SAM HARRIS on why Mother Nature is not our friend • NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB on the irrelevance of probability • ALUN ANDERSON on the reality of global warming • ALAN ALDA considers, reconsiders, and re-reconsiders God • LISA RANDALL on the secrets of the Sun • RAY KURZWEIL on the possibility of extraterrestrial life • BRIAN ENO on what it means to be a "revolutionary" • HELEN FISHER on love, fidelity, and the viability of marriage…and many others.

"The
splendidly enlightened Edge Website (www.edge.org) has rounded off
each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting
contributors to answer one question. I strongly recommend a visit." The
Independent

"A
great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture." El
Mundo

"As
fascinating and weighty as one would imagine." The
Independent

"They
are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to
make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in
a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers
have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change
their minds." The Guardian

"Even the world's
best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists
respond to a new year challenge." The
Times

"The
world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful,
humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual
treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening
reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." San
Francisco Chronicle

"As
in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly
open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity." The
News & Observer

"A
jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues.
This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake — bracing,
possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up." The
Globe and Mail

"Answers
ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate
pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions." The
Toronto Star

"For
an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this
is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!" National
Review Online

"Whether or not we believe proof or prove belief, understanding belief itself becomes essential in a time when so many people in the world are ardent believers." LA Times

"Belief appears to motivate even the most rigorously scientific minds. It stimulates and challenges, it tricks us into holding things to be true against our better judgment, and, like scepticism -its opposite -it serves a function in science that is playful as well as thought-provoking. not we believe proof or prove belief, understanding belief itself becomes essential in a time when so many people in the world are ardent believers." The Times

"John Brockman is the PT Barnum of popular science. He has always been a great huckster of ideas." The Observer

"An
unprecedented roster of brilliant minds, the sum of which is nothing
short of an oracle — a book ro be dog-eared and debated." Seed

"Scientific
pipedreams at their very best." The
Guardian

"Makes for some astounding
reading." Boston Globe

"Fantastically
stimulating...It's like the crack cocaine of the thinking world....
Once you start, you can't stop thinking about that question." BBC
Radio 4